I Once Met ... Idi Amin

Journalist and champion swimmer Alex Mitchell in the pool with the President of Uganda ... The lap that Field Marshal Amin won ... Lord of All The Beasts of the Earth ... Lured into an interview by flattery ... Rifling the presidential desk ... Bodies in the lake ... Scary time in Kampala 

"Dr" Amin: also claimed to be the "uncrowned king of Scotland"

I arrived at Entebbe Airport in February 1971, caught a taxi to the Apollo Hotel and booked into a room on the top floor so I could have a bird's eye view of Kampala. 

It was the first overseas assignment for my new employers, World in Action, commercial television's answer to the BBC's Panorama and Australia's Four Corners, and I was determined to get my "scoop", the first TV interview with Uganda's new ruler, Army Sergeant Idi Amin. 

When I left London it was mid-winter and freezing; in Kampala it was mid-summer and hot, so I was delighted that my hotel had an outdoor Olympic-sized swimming pool. 

In the morning I sprang out of bed, climbed into my budgie smugglers and a dressing gown and took the lift to the pool. I made a mental note that the local English language newspaper was reporting that "Field Marshal" Amin was on the brink of announcing his first cabinet. 

Amin's predecessor, Dr Milton Obote, learned of the Kampala coup while attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Singapore. 

On my second day at the pool, my laps were interrupted by a giant who dived into the water and started to churn up and down. 

When he stopped near me I said, "Good morning, Mr President".

"Where are you from?" he asked.   

He appeared delighted when I told him I was an Australian. "Come and swim against me, I want to race you." We took to the starting blocks and on the count of three, dived into the pool. 

I flew through the water when it suddenly dawned on me, 'On my god, I'm about to touch ahead of him,' so I eased back in order that the President For Life could have his victory. 

He beamed triumphantly and said: "I told you - I defeated you - I win - You have lost." I threw caution to the wind, admitted that I was journalist from Australia and that I was in Kampala to interview him for television. 

"No, no, no," he said turning nasty. "You people don't like me - you say bad things about me." 

Quickly I explained that he was greatly admired in Australia, and particularly in Britain where Queen Elizabeth II was a huge fan. "Really", he said. "I will go on your programme if the Queen herself watches it." 

A few months later Amin was a guest at Buck House taking tea with the Queen. 

We got our interview, left his office and flew to the airport and safety. Years later, my cameraman Mike Whittaker was asked for the most frightening moment of the Kampala story. 

"I can easily tell you. It was the moment [when] we're in Idi Amin's presidential office and I see Alex lifting papers off his desk and stuffing them in his pockets. I thought we'd never get out alive." 

Others were not so lucky; we also filmed dozens of bloated bodies floating in Lake Victoria after they been tortured and bayoneted. Shamefully, he was assisted by governments in Britain, white Africa, Australia and Israel, presumably because Idi Amin was a free-enterprise sort of dictator while Milton Obote espoused socialism with his 1969 pamphlet, The Common Man's Charter. 

Alex Mitchell is former State Political Editor of Sydney's Sun-Herald and past president of the NSW Parliamentary Press Gallery. He blogs at cometherevolution.com.au  

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